Vacation part dos, San Diego

We packed up and rode the train from Anaheim to San Diego last Friday. Unfortunately, if you want WiFi at the beach, you have to pay for it, so we went without. It was a nice trip down, except that we were stuck in a car with thirty screaming Jesus revival teenagers. Those kids really need to find some outlet for ALL that energy. Please.

My dad grew up in San Diego, after moving west from Arkansas during World War II. Many summers of my youth were spent playing in Pacific Beach where my grandmother had a home. She bought the land in the 800 block of Opal in 1946 for $500 and spent about $4,500 to build the two bedroom home with a large bonus room and a huge back yard. I moved down to live with them in 1985 and lived in PB until February 1987 when I returned to Oregon. This was the first time I had been in California since I left.

We stayed at the Surfer Beach hotel in the heart of PB. The first two and a half days were spent playing at the beach. The weather was perfect. Sunny and 80 degrees, with the water not much cooler than the air temperature. We spent the better part of Saturday on the beach, which was packed, as you can see. Becky got a really nice sun burn, which she is still recovering from, and Hailey caught a few waves on a boogie board. Becky and I could never seem to catch a wave ourselves on the thing. I found it was more fun to body surf than boogie board.

This fellow was building himself a rather nice sand castle in front of us. The girls were trying to do the same behind him there.




I don't ever recall the beaches being this crowded when I lived here, but then again, I didn't usually venture to the beach in the middle of summer. There were easily a hundred or more surfers up and down Pacific and Mission Beach on any given day, with most of those on the northern end of Crystal Pier. There were probably two or three times that many swimmers and boogie boarders.

This was the finished castle.

And here is Zakiya's completed sand "snow man"

Hailey decided that playing in the surf was more fun.


On Sunday, we spent almost half the day navigating the public transportation system downtown to get a rental car, since the only offices open on Sunday were downtown.

We discovered that even Sand People use the trolley in San Diego.


We returned to our hotel, had a quick dip in the pool and headed out to my cousin Kellye's house for a BBQ. My aunt Beverly and cousin Steve were also there, as were Kellye's children and husband. Kellye's eldest is almost 20. She was rather small the last time I saw her! It was great to see all of them and cousin Kellye said that we have to send the girls back to stay with her. Right on!